Section 8. Statement of Significance
The Western Electric Company – Tarheel Army Missile Plant meets National Register of Historic
Places Criterion A for industry and Criterion C for architecture. The complex’s primary local
significance stems from its use for military-related manufacturing, product development, and testing.
In February 1942, as part of a national campaign to repurpose underutilized industrial plants during
World War II, the Defense Plant Corporation acquired three tracts encompassing 211.26 acres from
Washington National Insurance Company. The Hagerstown, Maryland-based Fairchild Engine and
Airplane Corporation immediately leased the complex and used it to manufacture twin-engine,
laminated-plywood airplanes for the war effort from May 1943 through September 1944. The
following month, Fairchild’s Duramold Division became the Burlington plant’s sole occupant. In
December, Firestone Rubber announced that it would utilize the facility to manufacture ordinance for
the United States Army. Firestone vacated the complex after World War II’s end in August 1945.
The General Services Administration then assumed the property’s management. Western Electric
Company leased the plant from 1946 until 1991 and developed and manufactured sophisticated
communications equipment and weapons including Nike missile guidance and anti-aircraft apparatus.
The concern’s contribution to the local economy as a manufacturer, employer, consumer of local goods
and services, and taxpayer during this period was enormous. The plant employed up 4,500 workers
when operating at full capacity. The U. S. Army Missile Command based at Redstone Arsenal in
Alabama had assumed jurisdictional oversight of the Burlington facility in 1957, and in August 1963
named it Tarheel Army Missile Plant. In 2004, the federal government designated the complex surplus
property and sold it to Hopedale Investment, LLC.
The Western Electric Company – Tarheel Army Missile Plant is architecturally significant due to its
collection of intact mid-twentieth-century industrial buildings that display a functionalist approach in
their form, massing, expressed structures, and open plans with fenestration dictated by spatial use. The
nominated area encompasses fifteen buildings and three structures erected from 1928 through 1978.
The Detroit architecture firm Albert Kahn Associated Architects and Engineers, Inc., designed the
extant manufacturing and office building additions, power house, and reservoir erected during
Fairchild Aircraft’s tenure. Western Electric’s New York Plant Development Division worked with
engineers at the Burlington facility to design Building 13 (1952) and Building 16 (1959), which
provided interior laboratory, office, and product assembly space as well as rooftop radar systems
testing areas. Western Electric also erected warehouses, industrial waste treatment plants, and other
auxiliary structures as needed.
The buildings employ structural systems ranging from riveted steel frames comprised of columns,
beams, and trusses to reinforced-concrete columns, beams, and slabs. Brick, stucco, concrete block,